Reconstruction and history focus of upcoming Robert Smalls Lecture

Upcoming Event

African American Studies

The lecture series, in its 20th year, is named for daring Civil War hero and Congressman
Robert Smalls of South Carolina.

How history is written and remembered will be the topic of the 20th annual Robert
Smalls lecture on Sept. 7.

Thavolia Glymph, professor of history and African and African American studies at
Duke University, will deliver a talk titled “Reconstruction’s Open Sore: The Promises
and Perils of How We Write and Remember History.”

Originally scheduled in April but postponed because of inclement weather, the lecture’s
focus is perhaps timelier than ever in the wake of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia,
and the ongoing national discussion about Confederate monuments. The lecture will
be at 7 p.m. in the Campus Room at Capstone and is free and open to the public.

“What I hope the audience takes away from Dr. Glymph’s talk is what history can teach
us about the present,” says Valinda Littlefield, director of the College of Arts and
Sciences’ African American Studies program, which sponsors the lecture. “The Reconstruction
period was one of many very violent eras in American history. When you read accounts
of the kind of racial hatred and violence experienced mostly by African-Americans
during that time, it’s very disturbing. But you also get a glimpse of possibilities.”

Littlefield points to the role African-Americans played in promoting universal education
in the era as well as securing women’s rights and upholding America’s democratic ideals.

Glymph is a historian of the 19th century U.S. South, specializing in gender and women's history, slavery, emancipation, the
Civil War and Reconstruction.

She is the author of the prize-winning “Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation
of the Plantation Household,” which also was named one of the 10 best books on slavery
by “Politico” in 2015. She is co-editor of two volumes of “Freedom: A Documentary
History of Emancipation, 1861-1867.”

Glymph’s most recently completed book, “Women at War: Race Gender and Power in the
Civil War” will be published by the University of North Carolina Press, and she is
currently completing a book on African-American women and children refugees in the
Civil War with a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Begun in 1997 under the leadership of visiting professor Andrew Billingsley, the lecture
series is named for daring Civil War hero and Congressman Robert Smalls. Some previous
speakers have included historian John Hope Franklin, poet Nikky Finney, painter Jonathan
Greene and Congressman James Clyburn.

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